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great for ball pits

I bought these balls to go in the paddling pool I have. We rarely use it to paddle in as it is usually not warm enough but it is perfect for a ball pit.

There are one hundred balls which is the same amount as I have seen from other brands. One hundred sounds a lot but it doesn't fill up the paddling pool and they soon start disappearing after being thrown all around and being found in unexpected places.

The thing I like about these balls that is different than other brands is the colours. I really like the pretty pinks and blues (mostly pink) which makes it look girly with nice pastel colours. Most balls I have seen are red, blue, green and yellow so I like that these are different.

The balls are the size of a tennis ball which is a good size for the children to hold. Even little hands can pick (and throw) them easily.

They are very light as they are made from a thin plastic being hollow inside. Because of this it means they are squashed easily and this is sometimes impossible to undo. This has happened to quite a few balls as the children run and jump around everywhere in and out of the ball pit. It is not solely there fault though, I have stood on a few.

The children really enjoy playing with these balls and especially like that there is so many of them. They use them to hide things in or just to play catch or other ball games. We usually keep them inside so they can be used whatever the weather and I know if one is thrown I don't have to worry about it hitting the other child or fragile items.

They are recommended for children over 18 months which is when I started using them with the children.

The balls can be bought from Early Learning Centre for £10. It would be nice if they were cheaper but it's still good value for money.

These balls are well worth the money.

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great, colourful, fun play balls from early learning centre

For my daughter's first birthday party we invited loads of her baby friends round from mums I met at baby groups and one of my friends and her son, so probably about 8 babies/toddlers in total! Of course at that age I wanted something they would all have fun in and to keep them all entertained so after seeing an inflatable swimming pool on offer in mothercare, I also thought it'd be fun to buy some playballs to fill it with so picked up a bag of these playballs to get the party going!

The balls come in a clear plastic bag, so you can see the balls through it. It is helpful with a handle at top to carry it around, and a zip opening. Being made of plastic, allows for it to be quite compact and packed away easily when not in use, and yet putting the balls away in them is easy to do and they all fit back inside with no problems.

The balls I got were different shades of pinks, light/dark and baby blue so very girly but also something fun for boys to play with! The bag contains 100 balls for a mere tenner, which seemed really good value, but disappointingly this didn't even fill half the ball pit! As I didn't notice this until the day before the party, and I don't live particularly near a Mothercare/ELC store, I ended up buying a second bag of play balls but this time from the Argos down the road from where we live. These balls were red, blue and green, and cost the same price for 100 balls. However, in comparison the argos balls were much smaller and a bit more cheap looking and thin in plastic in comparison to these balls! So I would definitely say these balls are better quality and better value for money!

Two years on we still have the ball pit, although we have moved residence and it is pretty much made redundant. My daughter occasionally likes to play with us in a game of catch (although she can't catch to save her life bless her lol) or she shoves them down her top so she can have boobies like mummy haha! So sadly at 3 years of age I think the novelty of these balls has definitely worn off but she did get a lot of use and fun out of them between the ages of 1 and 2 and they are great fun to play with. They are extremely easy to wipe clean and although a few of them have a dent from where she enjoyed biting them back when she had only a few teeth these have lasted well.

Overall these balls are great and I think they represent excellent value and are fun to play with in a home made ball pit. As my daughter no longer plays with hers I am probably going to donate them to her nursery (also where my sister works) so they can use it and also as a clearout, but for anyone looking to buy these I'd definitely recommend them - they get a big 5 out of 5 from me!

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Coloured Plastic Balls.

The Playballs= = = = = = =The Playballs comes in strong plastic bag. The bag we have at home has a blue edge to it and blue zip so you can close the bag and stop them from falling out. In the bag you get 100 coloured plastic balls in a range of different colours including red, green, blue and yellow. You can also purchase a set of girly coloured balls which includes pinks and purples. As these were for my nephew we wanted the balls with the red, green, blue and yellow in so this is the coloured pack we purchased. The balls cost £10 which we didn't think was bad value for a bag of 100 coloured balls. As the balls are made of plastic it means they can be used in a small pool, ball pit or can just be used to play in general.

Using the Playballs= = = = = = = = = =We have used the balls for a number of different things when playing with my nephew. In the summer we fill up a small paddling pool with some water and put the balls in the pool. The balls float and my nephew loves being in the small pool with the water and the coloured balls floating around on the water. As the balls are brightly coloured it makes the pool look really colourful and he loves picking up the different colours and throwing them out of the pool as we play with him and throw them back in again. We have also put the balls in the pool withouth any water. As the paddling ball is very small we have had it in the lounge and filled it up with balls. My nephew can then climb in and out of the pool when he likes fully clothed. He loves going into the pool and trying to hide in amongest the brightly coloured balls. We have also used the balls to have a play fight with other members of the family. Some of us will go over one side of the room and others go over the other side and we will throw as many balls as we can at each other. My nephew loves joining in with this and he finds it very funny. He also likes to hold the bag and help to put the balls back into the bag again afterwards. Some of the balls are quite thin and they do sometimes dent a little and my nephew has managed to bite a small hole in 1 or 2 so they have had to been thrown away as they started to flatten a little. We have had the balls for at least 2 years, where my older nephew first had them. Although there isn't as many balls as there was when we first purchased them there is still a good amount of them and the colours still look really bright and colourful. I think the bright colours of the balls attracts younger children to them due to how colourful they all look when they are put into a small padlling pool or ball pit.

Overall Opinon= = = = = = = =I think the balls are of reasonable value and are a great item for your children to play with as they can be used in many different ways. The balls are long lasting and will last you a good few years and longer so you will certainly get your money's worth from them before your chlild grows out of them. I think other places such as Toys R Us and Argos sell packs of these balls during the summer season, how-ever I'm not sure on the price difference between other retailers and Early Learning Centre. I'm taking one star off this product due to the fact that some of the balls are quite thin and tend to dent quite easily and don't go back into shape, this is only for a few of them though. My nephew sometimes manages to bite a small hole in the ball so it deflates slightly and then this has to be thrown away. I would highly recommend these to others and I think girls would love the pink/purple coloured balls.

(review may also appear elsewhere)

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100 playballs which are pretty colours and very durable.

During the summer months, you can hardly see the grass on my back garden due to the amount of outdoor toys we have. Since Lauren was around 8months old, there has been one product which comes out every year which is her ball pool.

*The product:*

This is a mesh bag which contains 100 hollow plastic balls. The balls are 3 different shades of pink and there are around 20 baby blue balls in there too.

The mesh bag is a dark shade of pink, it is re-useable and has a zip which goes all around the top.

ELC also sell these in a multicoloured pack.

*Price and availability*:

We brought ours nearly 4 years ago, I think at the time they were about £8 a bag but ELC had an offer of 3 for 2 on all outdoor toys. Having just checked online, they are now £10 a bag and the 3 for 2 offer is currently on.

*How to use:*

We put ours in a cheap small padding pool and then Lauren used to sit in there. As she has got older, we have tried to keep them in the pool but they have ventured into the paddling pool (because they are hollow, they float), they have been played with as footballs, another thing she likes to do is just role them down a slide. Lauren also likes to put loads of them on the trampoline when she is on it and make them 'bounce around' when she jumps.

*My opinion*:

These balls are really good quality, unlike cheaper versions on the market, the plastic is quite thick, we have brought others in the past and the slightest touch, and they dent.

The colours are really nice and girly which is what first attracted me to them.

A word of warning though, although there is 100 balls, we needed 3 bags of these to fill the small paddling pool we had.

I also found the balls really useful when teaching Lauren to count, she managed to count to 13 quite quickly (mainly due to counting as we went up the stairs) but anything past that, we struggled, I used to count them with her as we put them away or put them in different places.

I would recommend this product, we have had hours and despite the balls being 4 years old, they are still in excellent condition.

For me, I would give 5 out of 5 stars!

Review may also be on other sites under the same username.

Thanks for reading.

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My children have been enjoying our local soft play centre since they were a year old. The balls are a firm favourite too.I bought a cracking peppa pig inflatable boat that can be used as a paddling pool or a ball pit we used it as a ball pit because it is big in size.I choose to buy the Early learning centre balls because the shop happened to have them on special at the time of my purchasing and you can choose the ball colours.

I paid £20 for three bags of 100 balls i feel this was reasonably price due to the buy 2 bags get 1 free offer. Normally the elc has a £10 price tag on the bags of balls but ever few months the offers are on.I choose the bag of pink and ball balls because they look girly and nice. You can have the normal mixed bags with red, yellow, green and dark blue balls.As stated each bag has 100 balls in them.

The bag the balls come in is just a clear holdall with a zip around the top. On the case is a carry handle making it easier to carry the bag of balls around. I like the fact the zip goes mostly all the way around the bag opening it right up so much better for packing the balls back in.These balls are hollow and made from lightweight plastic. Each ball is the same size and id say roughly the size of a tennis ball.

It took the whole three bags of balls to fill our ball pit that's 300 balls. The balls look very cool spread around inside the ball pit.My girls have had endless fun with the balls from throwing the balls around the room and at each other. Quite often Jess will dive into the pit of balls and Hannah likes to hide under the balls. Fun for them. As the balls are so lightweight i found them easy to throw and if you do get hit with them it does not hurt.

Elc balls are durable. I found the price to be good and my girls are still over a year later having fun with them. You can add a few balls in the ball tub letting them bob around or even in the paddling pool like i did adds a little bit extra colour and fun for the kids too.

The only little annoying thing for me is spending time picking each ball up at the end of the day.

I recommend the elc playballs. Have fun making your own soft play area.

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Robust and essential outdoor ball-pit balls with storage.

I usually start my reviews saying how expensive a product is, and then (sometimes anyway) justifying the price. At £10 for 100 balls, I do think these balls are quite expensive (surprise, surprise!) especially as many ball pools or paddling pools will need at least two bags to fill them. However, as Baby Frank is only one, she is quite happy in her little inflatable paddling pool with just one bag of these balls.

These packs of 100 balls are available from Early Learning Centre in several different colour options. Baby Frank (or should she be 'Toddler Frank' now?) has the pink and blue balls selection, which are predominantly two shades of pink with some blue thrown in for good measure. The balls themselves are simply hollow, plastic balls. However, since many play dates with many toddlers, I have discovered that some makes of these balls can be easily squashed, bitten or split by inquisitive and over zealous toddlers. Not so with these balls! I have been really pleased that they have survived numerous attacks by small children, although I can report that they do not withstand the jaws of our Jackadoodle dog!

The balls come in a zippable, plastic bag, which has a handle. Its dimensions make it easy to store, if a little bulky, which is always an important consideration as children's toys can take up so much room. I have found it a bit of a pain to put all 100 balls back in the bag, but now use a wide, shallow bowl to scoop them up and pour them into their container which saves precious minutes each evening.

Baby Frank loves playing with these balls, and I can be sure that they can withstand the pressures of her enthusiatic friends as well. Definitely a good buy, and probably worth paying a little more for.

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Great fun for little ones

For my sons birthday he received a paddling pool and before this glorious weather came along we decided we would use it as a ball pit until the nicer weather decided to arrive and so went on the hunt for some play balls. We purchased the multi coloured play balls from elc which cost £10 for a bag of 100.

The balls them self come in a zip up bag which is really handy for keeping them stored as they are so small they can be a pain to pack away but knowing there is a re usable bag for them is so much better they can be put away when not being used.There is a great mix of colours which is great as the different colours catch little ones attention and keep them interested in the balls. It also helps younger children learn about different colours and have been an aid in teaching my youngest son his colours.

The balls them self are made of hard plastic but are not so hard that they can hurt little one. They re really stable and as the children spend half the time sitting on top of them squeezing them and just all round being rough with them they are very well made. Most of them have stayed intact a few have popped into itself and so had to be disposed with but this is with very few so I think they are great quality.

They are very versatile and can be used in water or in ball pits. They can be used to help children count or just for playing around with there are so many different uses for them and all round fun.

My only negative is with the size of the balls it takes 3 even 4 bags to fill a ball bit which is going to cost about £40 which can be a lot on top of the ball part itself. Sometimes elc do buy 1 get one free on the packs so It would be best to buy them when on offer to save money.

All round I think these are great they are sturdy and can last a lot of hard play from children they are great fun and keep them entertained for hours. They are reusable and all round a ball for children to play with. They are only available at elc in store and online. There are suitable from 8 months + but I do not see any harm for younger children as there is nothing that could hurt them.

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Quality worth paying for.

When I was pregnant with my oldest son, my husband felt we just had to have all sorts of baby items we never used. One of these came in hand later though, a large plastic play pen. Although the play pen was never used for it real purpose, it makes a brilliant ball pit - but is takes quite a lot of balls.

We started out with an inflatable ball pit from ELC ( which lasted less then a week), so of course we bought the balls while we were there. We bought 3 bags each containing 100 balls, which was no where near enough even for the ball pit, and once we moved the balls to the play pen we really needed more. So we bought more from a boot sale, from woolworths and from Argos. Over time though, many of these balls have burst and we ended up needing more, so yesterday I sent my husband off to buy 3 more packages from ELC.

I do think all children love ball pits. There is so much fun to be had, diving into them, burying yourself ( or a sibling) and throwing the balls about. We even have a small basketball hoop set up over the ball pit to make baskets with. Even babies love these balls, they are soft and light and easy to hold or throw. I have also found that their light weight makes them unlikely to do any damage in the house, and they do not hurt when you get hit with them. Of course I would still prefer that they not land in my tea - why everything ends up in my cuppa I will never know! They are also handy for babies to learn colours from, or just to have a good chew on.

I had read several reviews here on dooyoo and researched online carefully before choosing ELC. The balls cost £10 for 100 at ELC, but they have a buy 2 get one free special that seems to go on forever. This meant 300 balls cost me £20. Every other place I checked was less money most of them being £5 for 100 balls, so I would have ended up with 400 for the same money, so why did I choose ELC?

COLOURS ELC does have more choice in colours I believe, with the traditional multicolour, pink with light blue, and even a set with silver. While I would have liked the ones with silver, they were out of stock, so we ended up with the ordinary multicolour which I could have bought anywhere. While the extra colours are nice, it would not be a selling point to me, especially since the 300 new balls are just a top up for the heaps we already have.

PACKAGING Again packaging is not a selling point for me, because we keep the play pen and balls set up at all times, only taking it down for occasional cleaning, or more recently to paint the room. However, I realise many people want to be able to put the balls back into their packages for storage. ELC's balls come in a thin white net bag. I could see this tearing with frequent use but it does seem well stitched together. I am aware that the plastic bags also tend to split at the seams, but they still seem sturdier then these. The net bags do have one great advantage though. If the balls are used with water, or even just washed before storage, the balls will dry nicely and no worries of mold or slimy stuff growing. Although I won't be using these for storage, I am keeping these bags. I think they will be very handy for swimmers.

SIZEThis is another case where size really does matter. I was hoping to get really big balls, like the ones in soft play centres, and I do have a few of these, which I believe came from the boot sale. However, I could not find anything like this in a reasonable price ( I dis find some at about £1 per ball). The ELC balls however were the largest I could find in anything near a reasonable price. They are only slightly larger then most other play balls at 6.5 cm or 2.5 ". The other balls we have range from just barely over 2" or 5.5 cm to 6 cm. I know this does not sound like much, but I do think it makes a difference.

DURABILITYThis was the real deciding factor in deciding to go with ELC. I know when we first set the ball pit up over three years ago for my oldest son we noticed many of the Argos balls split or went flat very quickly. Our ball pit is left up year round and gets quite a bit of wild play with my sons taking flying leaps from the train table (It is a very large home made train table) into the balls. Over the years the ball pit has diminished as more and more balls split and were removed. But the number of ELC balls seems to remain close to the same and it is very rarely that I find myself removing one of these. We felt that this fact makes these balls worth paying extra for as they will not be likely to need replacing.

RECOMMENDATION:If you are just buying a few balls to float about in a pool, i think I would go with a cheaper set, or if the balls will only be used occasionally. However, if you expect you ball pit to get a lot of use, then I would definitely choose these. Better to pay a bit more for something that lasts

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A brilliant set of playballs; nothing special in the construction but the colours are fab!

One of Hollie's favourite toys through the summer last year was her ball pit. We'd bought a combination padding pool and ball pit from Tesco, but unfortunately the 50 balls that came with it didn't even cover the bottom so I went hunting for more. I'm aware that this type of plastic balls are available from just about anywhere, but I like to be different so what I really wanted was more if a variation in colour than the usual red, blue and yellow playballs.

Enter ELC with their range of unusually coloured outdoor toys (unusual as in pink pretend lawnmowers and lime green 'handyman' sets), I found just the playballs I was after. Available in either the standard primary colours that you'd expect or the pretty pink set you can see above, these balls are supplied in a PVC-type zippable case and cost £9.89. Of course I chose the pink.

Apart from the very sweet colour, these balls are just like any other playballs within this price frame. The balls are slightly smaller than tennis balls; made from a very thin plastic the balls do feel extremely delicate, but rest assured they are very flexible so will literally pop back into shape if they get squished. Most of them anyway!

The idea is to buy enough playballs to fill the ballpit. There are no hard and fast rules as to how many balls you should buy, but I personally think it looks the most fun when the balls are piled in deeply enough for the squidy-winks to be able to bury themselves in them. I eventually ended up with four packs of balls (not all from ELC) so that I could fill the ballpit much higher than halfway. This allows Hollie to be able to leap into the ballpit and almost be covered by these lightweight balls.

And these ELC balls are extremely lightweight; even throwing one at full force isn't likely to hurt, and when a child jumps into a pit filled with them they easily move out of the way for a very soft landing. As I have already mentioned, the flimsiness of the balls is deceiving as it's very rare for one to become so damaged that it has to be thrown away. What tends to happen is that you might find a ball that has been flattened beyond repair, but leave it for an hour and when you go back it'll more than likely be ball shaped again! Magic!

What really sets these apart from all other playballs however are the colours. There are two different shades of pink (hot pink and a paler shade) as well as sky blue balls. There are visibly more of the hot pink balls than either of the other colours, which is a good thing as this is definitely the most cheerful colour in the set. Hollie loves pink so these balls were an excellent buy, we've mixed them with the more traditional brightly coloured playballs and the effect is brilliant.

They've been a real talking piece too, everyone who has ever seen them has commented on the fact that they've never seen either pink or sky blue playballs before. I know for a fact of at least ten friends and members of the family have bought a set after seeing our set - oh, and a random workman who bought them for his granddaughter after doing some work in our garden. Maybe I should be on ELC playballs commission?!

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Perfect for creating your own ball pit!

These multi-coloured balls, that come in a net of around 100 from The Early Learning Centre and cost about £10, are a real bargain and ideal for playing with in the garden! They are fairly hard-wearing anmd take a bit of abuse and are quite versatile in that they can be used in paddling pools or play/sand pits creating your own personal ball pit.

They come in a handy net bag to hold them all together, also making them easy to store, and are certainly wirth the price and are one of the better plastic ball sets of this type available to buy. This is about what you might expect from a reputable company like The Early Learning Centre who have long established themselves as a name you can trust for good quality childrens toys.

My daughter loves these and has even taken them in her bouncy castle when the weather is nice. The only problem I find is that they are a bit light and tend to blow around the garden if there is any wind. This can lead to you running about tryin g to gather them up! Also, if you do miss any, watch out whilst doing the lawn because I have quickly found that they are not lawnmower friendly and this is the only way any of these have managed to get damaged!

I would prefer these to have a bit more weight behind them so they were not quite so easy to blow around but a hundred balls for £10 does not seem a bad price and, this way, if you do lose a few it doesn't really matter so much!

They come in a variety of blues and pinks and whites though you can buy other sets that feature other colours.

Overall, these aree a bit of a winner all round and certainly worth a visit to Early Learning if you fancy making your own personal ball pit for your child to play in!

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Multi use balls bring lots of fun to playtime.

When my littlest had his first christmas he was only 6 months old. Because his brother is only 18 months older i was finding it hard when relatives asked what they should get to come up with a new and worthwhile idea. Then it struck me, we could get a set of ballpool balls to add to the play experience of some other items we had.

The set we got was £10 from the early learning centre. Our set was mixed balls with some silver balls. This set is still available at the same price a couple of years later, and you can also get just multi coloured balls, or the pink set above. Sometimes, you can also get 3 sets of balls for the price of 2, which is a great deal if you have a ball pool to fill, but perhaps a bit excessive when you only have a small area to fill.

The set comes with a very sturdy plastic bag which zips along 3 sides. This is a great way to store all the balls safely between plays, otherwise they end up all over the house.

My initial use of these balls was that we had a play nest big enough for a baby to sit in, so we added these balls to the play nest and my little one had great fun picking them up, trying to get his mouth round them to chew, and then throwing them at the rest of us. My elder child quickly wanted in on the action, so we ended up putting them both in the travel cot, and this worked very well. They didn't get the whole submersion thing going on that you get at soft play centres, but it was fun to pick out the colours and throw the balls round. Because they are soft, i wasn't scared one of them would get hurt or they could throw it with enough force to break anything.

My only issue with the balls has been that they get squashed quite easily, but i have found they usually have a small hole and it is possible to make a seal around it with my mouth and blow them back up.

As my boys have got bigger, i have found it better for us all to take these balls out into the garden so they can continue to be used without me getting annoyed at the mess. We have tried them in the paddling pool in summer, and playing golf with them with plastic clubs. By far, our favourite use now is playing with them on the trampoline. They can be thrown at each other without hurting, and it is good fun to make them all bounce as you jump.

These balls are said to be from 9 months to 8 years. So far my nearly 3 and 4 year olds are still really happy playing with them, so we will have to see if they last that long. Just over 2 years so far, and apart from a couple getting a bit sun faded when we forgot to pack them away, they seem to be capable of withstanding the robust play.

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A great buy

One of the presents that I bought my son for his first Christmas back in 2005 was a set of 100 play balls from the early learning centre as I thought they would be something he would have lots of fun with! This is my review of the product.

At the time of buying I was able to buy a set of 100 blue play balls. For the purpose of this review I checked the early learning centre website to see if they are still available and they are now selling just a pack of 100 multi coloured balls but strangely still have the set of pink balls, just no blue! Not to worry, the colour of the balls really doesn't matter anyway! The balls cost £10.00 at the time and they are still selling for that price now but are currently on a three for the price of two promotions with other outdoor toys so it would be a good time to buy them should you wish to.

The balls came packaged in a see through plastic bag which had a zip going all the way around the top. The bag is really very handy to store the balls in after play and I would not have stored them in any other way to be honest.

The balls are made of plastic but they are actually quite soft and the plastic is a bit squishy which in my opinion makes them great for young children as they can throw them around, chew on them and generally just have fun without you worrying that they are going to hurt themselves. The balls are also easy to hold for young hands and measure perhaps slightly smaller than an average tennis ball. I found that the balls were excellent quality and did not get damaged even though my son did try and bite them and things! I also bought some play balls from tesco after I had purchased these so my son had more to play with and I found that they literally deflated or split in two without too much difficulty which I was not keen on even though the balls were cheaper.

The ways in which we played with these balls was plentiful. On many occasion I would simply tip out the whole bag from over my head so that balls went flying all over the room! As a young child my son loved this and he would crawl around chasing them. As he got bigger this was still just as fun a game. We also used the balls in a paddling pool to make a kind of ball pool effect for him and he would love to throw the balls out of the pool and make me chase after them! Another good thing to do with these balls is to use them in the bath as they do float and it adds a fun aspect to bath time-I am not suggesting you pour in the whole one hundred balls to the bath but adding a few was always fun!

The guidelines on the early learning website say that the balls are recommended for children aged nine months plus but my son was seven months when he received them and as he was always supervised I feel this was appropriate. He enjoyed playing with these balls up until being about three years old so we got some good use out of them and I feel our moneys worth!

I would certainly recommend these play balls and I have to say I feel that you get what you pay for in this case and would certainly opt for these exact ones again should I have cause to. I would just say that if you are looking to fill a paddling pool with these you will need more than one pack as 100 balls just doesn't look that many in all honesty!